My Company

By Dan Berman

Workers looking for excellent 401(k) benefits now have a list of the most generous plans to guide them, courtesy of BrightScope.

Leading the pack was Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm based in New York. BrightScope noted the plan for its low fees, company generosity, participation rate and the size of participants’ account balances. Many of the companies on the list were law firms, medical concerns. UPS also made the cut.

Rounding out the top five on BrightScope’s list were: North American Partners in Anesthesia of Melville, N.Y.; Oregon Anesthesiology Group of Portland; Frontier Refining & Marketing Inc. of Denver; and O'Melveny & Myers, a law firm with offices in 16 countries.

BrightScope, a financial information company devised its mission is to “bring transparency to opaque markets” and used it to compile its inaugural list.

“Generosity is an important means for companies to recruit and retain top employees,” said Brooks Herman, head of Data & Research at BrightScope, in a statement. “Its importance is exemplified by the fact that half of the companies on this list have been on one or more other BrightScope rankings this year, and several more have been featured in years past.”

BrightScope found that the top retirement plans were superior in several ways to the average system:

Vesting: Six of the top 10 plans are fully vested the day an employee starts, while a total of 13 plans on the list offer immediate vesting.

Generosity: The average account balance for plans on this list is $470,014 compared to the average balance of all plans within the BrightScope system of $99,061.

Contributions: The average amount a company contributes to each plan on the most generous list is $31,181; compared to the plan average of $4,184

Participation: The average participation rate for plans on this list is 96.5 percent; compared to the plan average of 85 percent.